Pod Save America - Ron’s Boulevard of Broken Streams

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

The DeSantis campaign launch explodes on takeoff. Political Strategist Tim Miller stops by to break down what’s next for Tiny D and the rest of the GOP field. House Republicans are feeling so confident about the debt ceiling negotiations that they’re bragging about holding the economy hostage. And Jon and Dan dig into one of the week’s weirdest stories: why did Marjorie Taylor Greene pay $100,000 for a used tube of Kevin McCarthy’s chapstick? Join Friends of the Pod for bonus content, exclusive access and more: crooked.com/friends For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Ron DeSantis' campaign launch explodes on takeoff. And Tim Miller is here to break down what's next for Tiny D and the rest of the Republican field. Then, House Republicans are feeling so confident about the debt ceiling negotiations that they're bragging about holding the economy hostage. And finally, we dig into one of the week's weirdest stories. Why did Marjorie Taylor Greene pay $100,000 for a used tube of Kevin McCarthy's chapstick?

Just the big stories here on Pod Save America. Quick reminder before we start that Pod Save America will be live in New York City on June 12th at the Tribeca Film Festival. Alex Wagner will be joining us as co-host, as well as very special guests, Attorney General Tish James and the hilarious Roy Wood Jr. Tickets are almost sold out. Grab yours today at cricket.com slash events. And if you haven't heard already,

check out Pod Save the UK, which hit number one on the UK charts. This hilarious, insightful new podcast is your go-to source for everything UK politics. Hosted by comedian Nish Kumar and journalist Coco Khan, it's everything you love about Crooked Podcasts but with a British twist. From strikes to scandals, they cover all the topics that matter. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Dan, let's get to the news. Here's a question. If a presidential campaign launches on Twitter and no one can hear it, did it really launch? Ron DeSantis. He could have announced his White House bid with a big rally or a splashy primetime interview. Instead, he chose what was essentially a conference call with Elon Musk and one of his VC fanboys that was meant to showcase the governor's dulcet tones and the billionaire media mogul's technological prowess. If you didn't get the chance to tune in, here's how the first 20 minutes or so went.

But not those of us who've known and worked with Elon for nearly a quarter century. His commitment to freedom and his willingness to put his money where his mouth is. I think we've got just a massive number of people online, so it's service restraining somewhat. I'm super excited to have Governor DeSantis make this stark announcement. Governor DeSantis make this stark announcement. We're just trying to get it going. An auspicious start for Mr. Trump without the baggage, Trump without the drama.

Dan, you have seen quite a few campaign launches in your day. You've helped organize a couple yourself. Do you remember any announcements where you can't actually see the candidate or hear from them for a good half hour into the announcement? Well, John, I think we're all being a little bit unfair to Ron DeSantis because for about a century, all of the campaign announcements were audio only. That is true. Then the TV was invented. But no, not since then. So it's really make America great again kind of thing. Yeah.

We thought that was just like pre-Civil Rights Act when they said it. They actually mean pre-television. Worst presidential campaign launch of all time i was trying to figure this out and and like going back at least in my poor memory about what could have been what was a worse launch than this there were certainly worse campaigns that ended in disaster but the actual announcement is a tough one to really fuck up yeah i would say the ai chatbots were not helpful in trying to identify this question. You asked the AHA question. Yes, yes. Like I'm thinking back to Wes Clark after he announced, but his actual speech was okay.

And then he had that famous moment on the plane where he was asked about his Iraq war position. And he, in the middle of the question, turned around to his press person and asked what his position was. You mean, he said, he said, help Mary. Help Mary. Yeah, help Mary. That Mary. Yeah, help Mary.

That in my mind so far, that was back in 2003. That was like the running, in the running for the worst launch of all time. I mean, Donald Trump did come down an escalator and then start screaming about Mexico sending rapists and criminals. But that, by all accounts, was a stellar performance compared to that. Well, as it turns out, we were all a bit naive about the Republican Party base in 2016. That's true. That's true. Now, it is probably true that most Republican voters won't hear about this. Literally. And that is the best possible news for Ron DeSantis, because everyone who does hear about it will learn that it was an absolute disaster and a joke, We'll learn that it was an absolute disaster and a joke, including Republican voters who hear about it from right wing media, which is a rarity. Because like Fox News was dunking on it.

I mean, real problems, real problems. He even Ron DeSantis even lost cat turd. Cat turd. Not the cat turd. Also, the cat turd. That's Mr. That's Mr. Cat turd to Cat turd. Not the cat turd? The cat turd. That's Mr. Cat turd to you, buddy. It's at cat turd too, Mr. Cat turd. He said that it was like watching paint dry, and so that he left.

I don't know if he voluntarily left or he was forced out like most of us were most of the time. There were about 500,000 listeners when Twitter spaces crashed. Only about 200,000 came back once they finally turned it off and turned it on again. Average Fox primetime audience is about 1.5 million. What on earth was the DeSantis campaign thinking in choosing an audio only platform with a well-known history of crashing. Earlier, when you not so subtly called me old by pointing out all the campaign announcements

that I have seen over time. You were there at the Carter announcement, I believe. I wasn't born when Carter announced. I would point that out. I have to do the math in my head. I'm not sure. But look, when you plan an announcement, you and I have been a part of a couple. The way to do that is you pick the candidate's greatest strength.

Then you build the strategies around highlighting that strength for everyone. And for Ron DeSantis, that is clearly his voice. His voice. That's right. It annoys no one. It's not off-putting at all. So you want to just center the voice in the announcement because that's what people are going to want to hear. They're going to want

to hear Ron DeSantis. Just focus on that voice for years to come. Look, this is an idiotic strategy. Campaign announcements, all things in politics can go wrong. They go wrong one of two ways. One is a good idea that is either executed poorly or just suffers from bad luck. Like take the example of Tim Scott's microphone going out. Like that's not, maybe that's some advanced person's fault or they hired the wrong vendor, but that's not a sign that it was not a bad idea of an announcement. And then there are just straight up fucking terrible ideas. And the idea of doing an audio announcement, being interviewed by two Silicon billionaires on the fourth tier feature of a third tier social media platform? Even if it had gone perfectly, what was the upside?

I know. That's what I keep saying. It's hard to put the glitches aside, but even if we try to put the glitches aside, the idea is fucking terrible. Yeah. So just think about when you do this, we're going to focus on, and we will make fun of them for the 300,000 people or the 150,000. That is sort of a very, and I would say this to any person or politician I was advising, the numbers of people watching in real time is an anachronistic way of looking at it. What you want to look at is the tail effect of anything you do. How does it get picked up? So just what do you care about? Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina.

What are they going to play on the news to say that Ron DeSantis entered the race? Audio with a picture of Elon Musk and a picture of Ron DeSantis? You have to think about what the voter is going to consume. The regular voter who is not on Twitter, especially not on Twitter spaces, they're going to hear your voice. It's so bizarre. And the audio thing is just so weird. And this is an example of how just old and dumb that is. Since Reagan, for a long time, presidents got to give a weekly radio address every Saturday. And you would record it on Friday. You could pick whatever you want,

and radio stations all across the country would air it at a certain time. Know it all too well. Yes. In 2009. So Reagan did it. Bush did it. Clinton did it. Bush 43 did it. Obama comes in, sort of first internet president is like, this is dumb. Why would we just do this on radio? So we videotaped it and also put it on YouTube. So in 2009, well more than a decade ago, we were like, audio only is dead. And Ron DeSantis is bringing it back because David Sachs is probably going to give $50 million to his super PAC maybe, and Elon Musk could do the same. And so you can't use your

campaign announcement to raise money from super PAC billionaires. It's just a stupid, stupid, idiotic way of doing it. Last week, I talked about how terrible, how he should fire his entire team. This is worse. He did not fire them. He got an actual worse idea than that weird endorsing of Kelly Craft minutes before she lost by 30 points. Yeah, the young generational change candidate decided to take us back to the days before television, something that everyone has in their homes. He could have potentially reached lots of people on a piece of technology that they've had in their homes for quite some time. And that is the television. And actually, they have little televisions

on their phones, too. I can see that. That's happened also. But, you know, audio only is fine, too. And again, when you're doing your presidential announcement, you don't want the stage to yourself. You want to share the stage with an erratic billionaire and his fucking flunky David Sachs. I haven't said his name

because no one fucking knows who David Sachs is, right? He's just some random, you know, he's like the sixth guy at PayPal. And now he's rich and has some opinions. That's David Sachs. That's who Ron DeSantis wanted to moderate his announcement. Also, you couldn't really tell the difference between when David Sachs was speaking and Ron DeSantis because they both have terrible voices. And there were times when Ron DeSantis couldn't even get a word in edgewise because David and Elon were like hogging the whole thing and talking too much. I mean, I'm trying to get into the minds of the DeSantis campaign, of the people who, of the Yahoo who proposed this idea. And all I can think of is that they are all way too online. They seem to have actually bought into this idea that Elon Musk is the new Rupert Murdoch. This is where the media is going and the right wing media is going.

And maybe somehow they're going to take it to Trump by announcing on the platform that helped him become president. And Twitter used to be Trump's platform. And now here comes DeSantis. And maybe they'd get a lot of elite media attention, which it certainly did. Certainly did get a lot of attention. But, which it certainly did. Certainly did get a lot of media attention. But it all seems like real galaxy brain shit. Like who was the audience? Was it donors?

Was it Dogecoin fans? Was it Elon Musk fans, which at this point you could fit into a small building? Like what was going on? I don't want to be cynical about this, John, but Ron DeSantis' campaign plans to raise, the other super PAC plans to raise and spend at least $200 million. And it's probably going to be more than that. And Ron DeSantis' chief political guru is a guy named Jeff Rowe. He worked for Ted Cruz. He helped get Glenn Youngkin elected. He also owns the ad buying company that will be used to place the ads spent by the super PAC.

And he will get a cut of every single dollar spent. And you know who can give a lot of money to that super PAC? David Sachs and Elon Musk. And this is the same thing. We talked about this last week. This is why he endorsed Kelly Craft, who was also a Jeffro client, who also is a billionaire who plans to give money to the DeSantis effort. And so DeSantis is being like, he is no great shakes as a candidate or a politician. And we're gonna talk about that with Tim. But his campaign is pure idiocy right now. Absolute pure idiocy. I mean, it's just a bunch of reactionary Republicans

who have been red-pilled by being too online, just like Elon, just like Ron DeSantis. It's like the things they care about are all just these very niche concerns that you have to be way deep in the comment section to understand and right wing media. And speaking of right wing media, just before we just go off to Santos for a second, there were some takes floating around that Elon Musk has displaced Rupert Murdoch as the king of right wing media. You think the coronation might be delayed now?

Yeah, seems that way. And just the numbers here make it just very clear that Twitter, the scale of Twitter and what people who actually consume live political content on Twitter is quite small compared to Fox or frankly, any cable channel. Those are CNN numbers, not to be rude about it, but that we're talking about here. And that should probably give Tucker Carlson some pause on his plan to reinvent his empire on Twitter. Having said that, let's put aside who's the king of right-wing media and who isn't, it doesn't matter. But I think there is a lesson here for progressives, which is, I don't care about the Twitter space

generally, but what Elon Musk has done is he has bought one of the major distribution mechanisms of content in the world. And he is now using that to tilt the content that's distributed. He owns the pipes, not the media. Twitter's not a media company. It's a media distribution company. And if you're on Twitter, Charlie Borzell wrote this in The Atlantic, it's becoming a right-wing platform.

The content choices being made by Elon Musk via their algorithm is pushing more right-wing content. He's using his ownership and his platform to highlight. No Democratic candidate is going to go on there and do it, but there will be MAGA candidates all the time. And that is an argument, not that we should care that much about Twitter, but the future of media is media distribution, how you get content in front of people. And Elon Musk, as a newly found red-pilled right-winger, now owns one of those, owns the pipes. And that matters. And as Democrats think about how we're going to compete against that going forward, it's not going to necessarily be by buying The Atlantic or even building media companies. But we also have to think about distribution, how you get content in front of people's eyeballs. And that does matter. And

that is important. And we can make fun of it and laugh at the glitch, but, and that's all funny and the platform is dying. But between now and when it dies, it's going to have an impact and it's going to have an impact on the terms that Elon Musk wants it to have. Yeah, no, I agree with all of that, except it may not have the impact that Elon wants it to have because he's got a, he's got a pipe maintenance problem. Yeah. He's got to fix his pipes. Yes. He's not, he's got to fix his pipes, yes. He's not running the thing all that well. I mean, look, I don't want to do the whole

thing about Elon, but this is a guy who thought that his success at building rockets and cars would translate to success at building a media platform, but the guy has built robots with better people skills than he has. He's a shitty manager, shitty leader

with shitty politics that came from being red pilled from spending too much time on the platform that he paid $44 billion for. And all of his engineering skills couldn't stop the thing from crashing constantly because he doesn't have enough people working for him because he sucks. constantly because he doesn't have enough people working for him because he sucks. Look, he's doing a shitty job. There is no question about that. And it's a little bit Trump-esque. If a smarter, more focused right-wing billionaire owned Twitter, it would be much more damaging as it is under Elon. I just think the point is that there is a lesson in this for Democrats that we should understand. And Elon is, I'm not here to judge his overall intelligence, but he knew what he was doing when he bought this platform. Because he understood that in an age where cable TV is

going away, broadcast media is going away,apers are dead. The internet as we know it is dead. People don't go to websites anymore. Owning content distribution matters a lot and he bought it. And that will have an impact. It will not be the same as Facebook or TikTok or something else, but it is a thing and it's going to be yet another headwind that progressive messaging is going to push against in 2024. Yeah, and I think there's lessons to be learned in his purchase of Twitter and what he was thinking, what he's trying to do. And then there'll be lessons in the failure to actually make it a real bit,

you know, just for progressives, I think. So some of you might be thinking, all right, glitches aside, once they got back on there, conversation must have gone pretty well, right? Well, so after DeSantis hops on the call, he reads a short version of his stump speech. Again, just reads a stump speech. Like if you're going to have some fun informal chat that's new and different than your typical stodgy campaign launch, don't just read the speech you would have read at the rally with applause.

But that's what he did for a while. Then he took about an hour of questions on voters' top concerns from David Sachs, a MAGA congressman, Thomas Massey, a few MAGA pundits. Here's how it went. I pledge to be an energetic executive that will take on the important issues. The whole book ban thing is a hoax, and I think it's part of a political agenda. When we're taking on things like DEI, you get blowback from legacy media and the far left. We believe jamming gender ideology in elementary school is wrong. You have every right to do Bitcoin. The only reason these people

in Washington don't like it is because they don't control it. I think this whole ESG movement is really trying to do through the financial sector what they could never achieve through the ballot box. The legacy media, these corporate journals, they're in their little bubble. And look, I'm a blue collar kid. I grew up in the Tampa Bay area, working minimum wage to get through school. My grandfather worked in the steel mill in West Pennsylvania. I just know instinctively kind of what like normal people think about all this stuff. Here's the thing.

Here's the thing. Legacy Media is in their bubble. Ron DeSantis knows what normal people care about. Ron DeSantis knows what normal people care about. He knows that the Republican primary will ultimately be decided by Bitcoin enthusiasts who are angry with asset managers for investing in renewable energy. Right? That's what's going to determine the next president. Look, when you go to those New York Times diners all across the country, you know what you hear first?

D-E-I. E-S-G. D-E-S-G. There's just so many letters coming out of their mouth. They're just chanting letters. They're just chanting D-E-I. D-I-E. Bitcoin.

Dogecoin. Like David Sachs is a huge crypto guy. He is, I'm sure, has a lot of Bitcoin, cares a lot about it. He keeps asking about Bitcoin. And Elon Musk has some sort of trolly relationship with pumping and dumping Dogecoin. And he keeps bringing up Dogecoin awkwardly in that sense. And I know very little about crypto, but I don't think do Bitcoin is the right way it's described. We're going to let people do Bitcoin. is the right way it's described.

We're going to let people do Bitcoin. They also like, they spend a lot of time bitching about the media. Like Elon Musk is like yelling about the Charlie Warzel Atlantic piece that you brought up. Then David Sachs starts yelling about Vanity Fair.

I was also struck by like DeSantis. He not only has like, is way too online. He also sounded at times like someone who has spent too much time in Washington, like the establishment figure that Trump is trying to frame him as. Like at one point, he went from doing his woke Mad Libs thing to talking about omnibus spending bills and the power, executive power under Article 2 of the Constitution and how he would do regulations. And I'm just like, this is so fucking boring.

I mean, he- It's so boring. I think you are discounting the point when he announced his support for the RAINS Act, which came out of committee yesterday. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. A bill that came out of committee.

What is going on? What are you doing? What I think, and we'll talk about this with Tim, but he is a typical politician. what is going on? What are you doing? What I think, and we'll talk about this with Tim, but he is a typical politician. And that is the contrast. It's not who has baggage, who doesn't, who can speak MAGA better. It's one's a typical politician, one is not. And Ron DeSantis sounds exactly like a typical politician. One who speaks MAGA fluently, but a typical politician.

Wasn't a single mention of Donald Trump until about an hour into the conversation when right-wing radio host from Iowa, Steve Deese, asked about Trump not finishing the wall. The closest DeSantis got to criticizing the guy who's ahead of him by 30 points was, quote, our voters are sick of the empty promises. They want to see action.

What do you think? Is that never back down enough for you? I think it is fitting that the candidate who announced his campaign on Twitter thinks his best strategy is subtweeting his way to the nomination. Like, maybe they're waiting for the first debate, for that first exchange between Trump and DeSantis that people are going to see. Although I have to say they might never get that moment at this point. Trump might just skip the debates. I mean, there's nothing that people like us want more than DeSantis and Trump to fight each other. Right. That is absolutely what we want. You know, Lovett always uses the alien versus predator battle and Ron DeSantis clearly alien in that situation. But there's no point in his announcement, however stupid the format for which it was,

to directly go after Trump. This is not the moment for that. That moment is coming very, very quickly and it's coming faster. I don't think his argument is a sharp enough implicit contrast to achieve what he wants, but this isn't necessarily the day for explicit contrast. I think that's mostly right, though. If I was Ron DeSantis and I just realized that my campaign announcement fucking exploded because no one could hear me for the first 30 minutes, I might think to myself on the spot, maybe I should hit Trump because maybe that will get some coverage that kind of crowds out the no one could hear my campaign announcement speech because Elon Musk platform broke his audio only radio show, his conference, his conference call that he got on. I mean, it's not, he could have

just done a podcast interview. He could have done a podcast interview. We would have put that shit on YouTube, right? You would have seen the video. Yeah, it would have looked nice. Okay, quick break, and then we are bringing out the big guns to talk more about DeSantis' announcement in the 2024 Republican primary. Tim Miller will be joining us on the pod today our never trump pal bulwark extraordinaire author of why we did it tim miller welcome back guys i love to be called out of the bullpen on a day like today you know

i mean i'm excited. I know you had some takes. I know you had some takes. You're bursting at the scene with some takes. I am. I've got to pull back. So I want to just trigger you to start with a tweet from, and I know you've seen this tweet, of course,

because you're a Twitter addict like me, from National Review editor Rich Lowry about Meatball's announcement. Tech debacle aside, DeSantis is knowledgeable, a fluid speaker, and has command of details. Tim, is the woke mob just too blinded by Twitter shout-and-fraud to appreciate the rhetorical power of yesterday's performance? I don't think so, John. People might have Meatball derangement syndrome. That's possible. But I got to say, the derangement syndrome might be coming from inside the house at National Review. Now, for listeners who aren't aware, National Review is basically like a DeSantis fanzine. And so what happened yesterday is pretty noteworthy, actually. I was prepared for this question. I didn't know it was coming.

for this question. I didn't know it was coming. It was kind of like, remember the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine when on state TV there were a couple of anchors who were like, I don't know how well this is going before they were silenced. This moment happened yesterday at National Review because Rich's own colleague, Jeff Blair,

I pulled this out. I figured I was going to bring it out later, but you started with National Review, so here I am. Here's what Jeff Blair said. This isn't the bulwark. This isn't never trump tds this is jeff's take on the announcement uh desantis would hit powerful points about his florida record okay now you know it's the national review with that throat clearing but often only 10 to 20 minutes apart with gormless air in between devoted to discussions of esoteric technical issues of interest to absolutely nobody except cryptocurrency speculators. Twitter users checking in to hear from the newest Republican candidate about his plan for America.

Instead, got to hear VC guy David Balzac's blathering ten times as much as his hosting duties called for. And Thomas Massey calling in to rhapsodize about how much he enjoys his Tesla. That was published in the National Review yesterday. So I think that is a pretty clear sign that we are not blinded by our wokeness, never Trump, you know, resistance biases. And I think that it was really just a total disaster show that Rich was trying to, you know, he's just trying to polish the turd as best he could. Tim, but, you know, Dan and I were just talking about this. Do you not think that the Republican primary will be decided by Bitcoin enthusiasts and ESG opponents? Is that not the median Republican voter? When Doge, my favorite moment of the announcement was when david uh sax meatball david brought up doge and then i'm sure his breath was like you know for any doge enthusiasts out there like it was like even if he needed realized like maybe a lot of listeners might not catch the reference you know about about the doge coin um no i don't think so and these guys that run this this all-in podcast um that that for some reason ronSantis handed over his campaign announcement to like there is a, you know, in the concentric circles, there's some there's some overlap between the concerns of conservative contrarian billionaires who live in Silicon Valley and are annoyed by their liberal colleagues and the concerns of an average MAGA that lives in spartanburg south carolina

who has never heard of what an rsu is right like they have a couple overlapping concerns like they both don't like woke capital you know like they both don't love the pronoun stuff right but but there's also a whole nother bale of concerns that these like rich white bros have that like regular people have no idea what they're talking about and they seem to have completely infected ron desantis's entire announcement and and you know i think that the campaign required somebody who like didn't go to college and maybe one time attended a trump rally as a fan to be in their meetings, you know, to just vet like whether this stuff was going to land. Because I just I just multiple times over the course of the announcement, he was mentioning things that regular people, MAGA folks, we listen to in Borg focus groups, things that they never mentioned.

ESG is never volunteered by an actual voter. I guess like the the digital currency mandate is never something that is brought up voluntarily by a voter. It's weird. It's a niche concern of these losers. And Ron decided that that's what he was going to center his campaign announcement on, which seems like a miss to me. Dan and I were trying to get inside the minds of the people on the desantis campaign who decided that doing this would be a good idea like what's your thinking about what led them to this uh idea well i think there are two things that play one is you have to the desantis team is really kind of new and and i think not aligned right uh he had a very small tallahassee group the people had never done a national campaign.

There's some people that he'd flown in, a lot of whom people I know that are like not big Trump people or not MAGA people or old establishment Republican consultants that he's brought in. And so I think there's lack of trust there, right? So I think that they're just, for starters, like this campaign, like doesn't have a clear North Star with a candidate and staff that are like all working towards it so that's one one problem that that i think is pretty obvious at this point like the other the the thing i was also trying to put myself in their shoes like you know as a pundit we're all you you want to like not overreact right you know you gotta think yours i'm like i'm the comms person for ron de santa shiver like i'm in the room, someone proposes the Elon Musk thing.

Initially, I'm like, this is stupid. But then how do I talk myself into it? Right. And I think the answer is you get this lift, right? Like if the other idea is, oh, we're going to have a weekday announcement in Tallahassee, the turnout is not going to be anything like a Trump rally. It's not going to look like Springfield when you guys did your announcement 20 years ago, however long that was now. It's going to look, you know, it'll be a nice crowd. And Jeb's announcement was really nice. It was the best day of our campaign. So having a good announcement doesn't mean it's going to be a good campaign.

And the inverse is true. That's worth marking. But, you know, we had 4,000 people in a small basketball gym. It was full. It was nice. The news cycle lasted six hours. You know, Donald Trump announced the next day and it was over. Right. So so I think that they were considering, well, we could just do this sort of average Florida thing, not make a lot of buzz.

Or Elon Musk is like one of the most famous people in the world. We can kind of get some residual glow and and boost off of this and make it seem bigger and i think that was their the i assume that was their thinking and that just utterly backfired in every possible way because the opposite happened right he looked smaller it felt like the elon show not the run to santa show right and and he didn't get any boost in coverage i guess unless you count people making fun of him. The numbers didn't look... It was smaller than it would have been had he just announced on Laura Ingraham's show. Dan, could you imagine a scenario that was something in between what they went with and the traditional stodgy announcement speech that's typical?

What would have shown that he was a younger, new generational candidate reaching new people and new places? Don't overcomplicate the simple. The campaign announcement is supposed to be the best day of your campaign. It's the easiest day. The press, it's the day you'll get the most press coverage.

It is the day the press will cover your message. They will give you the headline you want. Even if you're a loser candidate, the press will treat you somewhat seriously. give you the headline you want even if you're a loser candidate the press will treat you somewhat seriously i mean just listen to you the conversation you tommy and love it had on tuesday about tim scott i was like you treated him as if he was like a front runner for the race it was like such a serious it was a little it was that was love it that was very establishment media high on tim scott he Scott. Love it and Mike Murphy are just... And so if he had just done the Jeb Bush...

I also tuned in for that and was intrigued by the bullish takes about Tim Scott. I don't know if there was a good triple bank shopping happening. I'm sorry to interrupt you, Dan. Go ahead. So just do the simple, get the 30 seconds on the local news of you with your message, get the headlines you want.

And no one's going to remember that he fucked this up. That's not, I don't think it's going to call some votes, but there's an opportunity cost to screw up your announcement because that's the day you should have your best coverage. The day you should be your best fundraising day for probably almost a year should be the day that you're on the phone with all the folks in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, trying to get them to endorse you. And when you fuck it up, you, it has an opportunity cost in it. And that part matters. And so there's no logic to this. Do the normal announcement and then do the quote unquote, and I know this word triggers Favreau,

the buzzy thing with Elon Musk the next day, right? Do your announcement, get your on message coverage, and then later on do the thing that'll get you additional attention, the Fox primetime interview, the morning show interview, the Elon Musk Twitter space or whatever. the Fox primetime interview, the morning show interview, the Elon Musk Twitter space or whatever. Just one small follow up on that, that proves this point, right, is in addition to the announcement, right, not a lot of people are going to tune into the actual announcement speeches, right? It'll be you'll get super fans. So but what else do you get out of your announcement? What did about what does every candidate get? Right? The images, right? You have the visuals, you take the three best delivered lines, you package them, you can put them in in an ad people see them on their instagrams on their web you know where they

are engaging with stuff the sanders didn't have that it was just his voice and this man has a voice for newsprint that's not his strength you know um and and so it's just his voice and so they put out did you see that i know john. Dan, did you see the video they put out? Like with, from the, it was a, they clipped. With Elon Musk picture? Yes. Yeah, they clipped what they thought were DeSantis' best lines from the Twitter space and compiled it into like a clip art show of Ron and Elon.

Like looking, doing weird. I thought it was a parody account. I couldn't believe, I was like, why do they have, it was like old pictures of Elon Musk that would just pop up in the video when he was bald. Yeah, what was going on there? They photoshopped F-16s into the photo of Rhonda Sanders overlooking the governor's mansion, which ever the reporters knew

because they used that exact image in an ad before without the F-16s. And they could have just had the announcement with the sign behind him, Florida's where woke goes to die, or whatever their message is, you know, and had a nicely packaged thing, but they couldn't do that because they didn't have any video.

It was an audio only. It's just, it was, again, you can overstate how important an announcement is. There have been people with, I don't remember what Joe Biden's announcement was. He became president. So, you know, I'm sure it wasn't a 10 out of 10, whatever it was. But it's noteworthy that it was this bad, especially when purportedly the DeSantis contrast with Trump is like, he's normal.

He's competent. You know, he can get the MAGA stuff done. Trump without the baggage, except now he's got some, he started with some baggage. Yeah, Trump without the baggage, except now he's got some, he started with some baggage. Announcement aside, Tim, like you've heard longer versions of DeSantis' stump speech many times before. Is there a compelling message in there for Republican voters once you get past the Bitcoin, ESG bullshit that sort of Sachs and Elon foisted upon him? Yeah, there's a great job, by the way, David Sachs. just want to shout you out one more time um really you're crushing it um you should become a full-time political strategist these guys i'm sorry he's a donor one more he's a new brand of uh of of

political figure i heard uh he's the donor influencer the donor influencer yeah these guys this is why i left the bay area is guys like this we need like a nepo baby term for people who are the fifth employee at a company that made it that did well and so they made a billion dollars like it was i kind of i don't begrudge elon and peter t like at least these guys had ideas like david sacks was just like you know their butt boy and he got a billion dollars out of it now okay anyway i'm sorry that's the end of my david sacks i ran back to desantis i i did i went to see him at the villages actually so i saw it in 3d in the republican you know in the core republican uh uh you know where the where the base voters you know are uh these older uh kind of mix between rich folks that moved down to florida

that are sunbirds and floridians who moved to the villages. And and his speech was really long. It was like 80 minutes. But there were 20 really good minutes. And this is the thing. When I said earlier about how it doesn't they seem confused, like they don't have a North Star. They aren't aligned like DeSantis's line about about having the same enemies as the Republican base voters. Right. Like the media hates me. Fauci hates me. You know, like I fought them in one, like we were in a state that used to be a swing state and we won by 20 points. And that's why these guys like lying and complain about me all the time, right? There's some material there that I think really does resonate with the base. And there's a reason

why DeSantis and Trump were tied around Christmas and these polls, right? That there were people who were like, I like Trump, but this guy won. Like he showed that you can do it. And, and, you know, he didn't shut down schools like these woke libs did. And right, there are, there are a few areas in the macro where DeSantis, like, I think can really resonate with these base voters. Like the problem is when he gets down into the micro, really resonate with these base voters. Like the problem is when he gets down into the micro, it has been off. And also his personality has been off. And he seemed to be a bit of a beta, right? And so it's like, if I was on his campaign team, I'd be thinking, how can we put him in a position to just maximize this sense that he's a winner, he took on the big fights, and kind of

avoid all of all this other, you know, all the other stuff that have weakened his candidacy. And they have done the opposite. They've leaned into all of his, you know, weird picadillos. Dan, how do you think his message, DeSantis' message at its, let's say at its best, compares to Trump and what Trump's trying to do? compares to Trump and what Trump's trying to do. So there's two elements of this. The first is on the culture war stuff, their messages are sort of the same. DeSantis is actually, I think, a little smoother in it. I agree with Tim in that sort of 20-minute core of the message when you put aside all the other sort of Fox News marginalia around woke capitalism. He has a culture war message that is, he is the person who has done the best job of that other than Trump in the party since 2016. DeSantis has two

problems. The first is Trump marries culture war stuff with economic populism. And DeSantis marries culture war with either no economic message or Paul Ryan economic messaging, which is an anathema to everyone, but particularly the Republican base. And the message is only as good as the messenger delivering it. And DeSantis, as of right now, is a shitty messenger. He's got a weird personality. He has no charisma. He has no ability to deliver it dynamically. He is not good at actually getting his message heard in the way that Trump is. And Trump is out there just kicking his ass because Trump is a weirdly compelling, bizarrely charismatic messenger, particularly among the Republican base. And Trump has one more advantage that DeSantis does not have is that Trump has an absolute thirst for the jugular. And when he finds a candidate's weakness,

and Tim knows this, unfortunately, all too well, he hammers it and hammers it and hammers it. And he's been doing it to DeSantis for months now. And DeSantis has not shown enough inclination to fight back. So regardless of what his message is, it's not getting heard because Donald Trump is dominating the space. Yeah, like as much as we, you know, we talked a lot about the CNN town hall, but think about like Trump's performance at the CNN town hall and him just sort of like steamrolling Caitlin Collins, you know, whenever he wanted and sort of owning that and doing what he wanted to do versus DeSantis, like struggling to get a word in edgewise with Elon Musk and David Sachs. That's just that sort of tells tells you everything right there. Yeah.

No, that is exactly right. The Trump people put himself in this position and that cnn town hall to be the alpha right and caitlin i think did the best she could and was fact checking him right but if you're watching this you're like oh man look at this trump went into the lion's den people are cheering for him right like yeah and and the other thing is trump is so weird and and we can you know you've spent seven years on this podcast talking about how dangerous and awfully is so you can you know kind of sometimes ignore that when you're like getting down into analyzing the campaigns but like the trump attacks feel like trump like they might be lies you know they might be exaggerations but you kind of like this is what this guy really

really believes right and did you see his insane attacks on desantis on truth yesterday like they put up this video that no real campaign would ever put up it's like a a fake twitter space and hitler is in there and the devil's in there and george soros is in there and the trump and desantis is in there and trump comes in and he's like you guys are all terrible and like trump is great trump should win i mean any if this thing if any staffer had ever, you know, pitched it in any other campaign, Republican or Democrat, they'd be like, never walk into the office again. Like whoever pitched. What about his first truth? His first truth was, Rob, my red button is bigger, better, stronger and is working in parentheses truth. Yours does not. And then in parentheses, per my conversation with Kim Jong-un of North Korea, soon to become my friend. I mean, that is like I saw that and I laughed and I'm like, that is fucking deranged. I didn't know what it meant.

And then I was like, one, how is this guy the front runner again? How is this the guy the front runner again? And two, like, I want to ask you guys this. Do you guys feel at all guilty about how much you're enjoying the Trump DeSantis content? yes i'm covering my laugh up while you read the tweet right now i don't want to laugh and this is like some of my friends did this to me in 2016 like they laughed at trump's hits on jeb and i was like it's not funny i was like he's an asshole okay like and i so i keep trying to put myself in that mental space like he is he's dangerous he's an asshole don't laugh at him that said it's like real and it's it is he's funny in his weird way sometimes you're laughing at him and

sometimes he does a good neg you know i remember one time i did laugh on uh just unwillingly during a debate when he like made fun of rand paul's size in the middle of a debate and i was like in the war room and i just couldn't help myself and i laughed i was like oh don't do that bad tim don't laugh so but Bad Tim. Don't laugh. So but it's real. Then you have the DeSantis. Like the flip side of that is it's just like it's so like these it's poorly packaged campaigns. You're like the vibe is, oh, this is a traditional campaign done poorly.

Like is what DeSantis is putting out. And like what Trump is putting out is like this is weird and crazy, it's real it's trump right and that is what the republican voters like about trump he doesn't seem like that he's running a real campaign and so every time desantis puts out one of these limp pushback attacks it's for it only helps trump more it ricochets back because it's like oh yeah this guy is just another jeb you know this guy's just another marco right it's like, oh yeah, this guy's just another Jeb. This guy's just another Marco. It's the same old, same old. I don't want the guy doing the weird going for the jugular, as Dan said, with the weird devil George Soros

memes. Dan, do you think it's any bit of a political problem for Trump that he may get charged with a few more crimes between now and Iowa? Wall Street Journal reported this week that Jack Smith is wrapping up his investigation

into the classified documents. There's January 6th. There's Georgia. Stormy Daniels' hush money trial was just, the date was set for March 24th, which is right in the middle of the Republican primary. You think it's possible for Trump's opponents to persuade voters that maybe multiple criminal charges make

the guy less than an ideal candidate to send on to the general? It's actually likely not to be in the middle of the primary, but the very first week of the general election, because the Florida primary is March 19th. If this is a, if this, contra to Tuesday's pod about the strength of Tim Scott, if this comes down to, if this comes down to Trump DeSantis, if Trump beats DeSantis in Florida, it's over. And his next move is going to be to show up in New York for a criminal

trial where one of the outcomes is he goes to prison. I mean, DeSantis, if you were trying to, like, what is the possible case for DeSantis to bounce back from this? It is simply to be the other person standing when Trump collapses under the combination of his own crimes, his own looming electability problems because of those crimes, and possibly a billion dollars in ads spent against him by anti-Trump forces on both sides of the aisle. Now, that's the same strategy that everyone put in place in 2016 that resulted in Trump ending up in the White House. But Trump is now lost, right? And there is a different world. So maybe that's what happens. And it's going to be incredibly weird that there are going to be all these pre-trial

motions happening, dominating the news as Trump is trying to lock up the nomination in a battle for all the marbles with Ron DeSantis in Florida on March 19th. Isn't it over if Trump beats DeSantis in Iowa? No, the Iowa is a terrible predictor of the GOP nominee. Oh, yeah. I guess my thought on this is like... Where's the comeback? Well, yeah.

Where does... Yeah, where is this? I could... If DeSantis wins Iowa, it's clearly not over, right? Like, I think then Trump has plenty of time to come back. Yeah, he could also lock this up in South Carolina. He could lock it up in South Carolina. Yeah.

I mean, he absolutely could lock it up in South Carolina. So the order here is you have those three Super Tuesdays on March 1st. Unless Tim Scott emerges. Yeah. Then mean, he absolutely could lock it up in South Carolina. So the order here is you have those three Super Tuesdays on March 1st. Unless Tim Scott emerges. Yeah. Then I'll have another chance. Yes.

Dan doing Aaron Gordon tomahawk dunk on a Tuesday pod is my favorite piece of content in a while. Well, now, Tim, I want your take on the Tim Scott announcement.

What is it? And not just, first do Tim Scott's announcement and then do you think that any of these other candidates can emerge as a legitimate challenger to Trump if DeSantis keeps doing Twitter spaces with David Ballsacks? really a nice serviceable B plus announcement in 1999. You know, I think that he would have been like 2012. Yeah. Really on track to be George W's VP after that announcement. You know, I think that he would have been one of the leading contenders.

It's just, it's nice. I mean, some of the themes appeal to me, obviously, but they, they feel on, you know,

authentic, right? It's like when you're talking about personal responsibility, it's like, well, I mean, don't you ever, doesn't Donald Trump have to, don't I have to have responsibility for Trump? Don't you have to be responsible for your enabling of him? The Capitol was stormed and you did nothing. You said it wasn't Trump's fault. So, you know, these traditional conservative themes start to ring a little bit hollow in the context of the Donald Trump presidency. But on paper,

I liked it. It's obvious he's running for VPp uh and i and how do you get inside donald trump's deranged mind and to think about like what kind of vp he might want in march right like it's some some days he's probably like i want carrie lake i want a loyalist you know and then other days you might have someone in his ear that's like no you need a black person might help you do better than you did last time in the suburbs and so maybe tim scott is in the mix why tim scott would want to be donald trump's vp and why proud to save america would praise him for skilled effort to do that those are two open questions for another day um to me look sarah longwell wrote for the bulwark a really good thing about how everything like trump's going down the escalator is like 00 B.C.

A.D. in the Republican Party. Right. And anything that feels like it's from the Old Testament is not going to happen. Right. And so if someone else could emerge that could beat Ron DeSantis, it would have to be somebody that feels like they're from the MAGA era. And that's nobody else in the field except for, I guess, this Vivek man, which doesn't seem legit. Right. So could a Tucker, you know what I mean?

Now we're getting into fantasy politics, right? Could someone else come off the sidelines who's more from the last eight years, doesn't have the stench of the pre-Trump party on them? Could somebody like that emerge? Maybe, but the clock is ticking on that. And I do think that I agree with Dan that, in theory, this thing could just fall into De de santa's lap like against all odds if the trump thing totally implodes but it's just the longer we go the less and less likely

that seems it's not as if he hasn't already been indicted once uh one other just really quick thing if you don't mind me taking over the show i'm mentally prepared for what's coming next and i don't think you are did you see what de santa's did make some news. So he didn't make any news on the first day of his campaign. But did you see what he said on the Clay Travis podcast? I missed that. Missed that. Yeah, it just happened. He said that he's open to pardoning January 6 participants

who were politically targeted all the way up to President Trump. So, you know, so now we have day two of the campaign, I think, is the clear newsmaker. Is that DeSantis would be open to pardoning Donald Trump for the insurrection. What a beta. Yeah, he did it in more of an alpha way that was like, when I'm president, I might consider pardoning Donald Trump if he asks me for it. Okay, then maybe now you're sort of good. But that that doesn't seem to be the path that you decide to take. So, you know, again, how do you contrast yourself if it's like, hey, Trump has all these all this legal baggage.

And so, like, we should go to me who's going to carry vicariously all Trump's legal baggage with me into the general election, but not have the charisma that he does. You know, it's just he's really, he's putting himself in a pretty small box as far as where his line is. Yeah, you always want your campaign to start by genuflecting to Elon Musk, David Sachs, and then ultimately Donald Trump, the person you are trying to beat for the nomination for president. are trying to beat for the nomination for president. Dan, I noticed that even terminally offline, Joe Biden weighed in last night with a few DeSantis dunks. He tweeted a fundraising pitch that just said, this link works. Then he tweeted, no matter what happens, you can hear Ron DeSantis' agenda loud and clear, included a video of DeSantis bragging about his most unpopular positions and laughing like a fucking weirdo. You like the idea of Joe Biden becoming a bit of a Twitter troll for this reelect?

I don't know that Twitter troll is the persona that I would suggest, but I do think his digital team has been very nimble and aggressive. And that's what you want, right? That is particularly in this period here where Republicans are going to be offering him all kinds of points of data points about his argument about Republican extremism. So have fun with it, make it compelling, do it quickly and use it to raise money and recruit volunteers. And so that's great. I was impressed with what they did yesterday. What about you, Tim? Yeah, going back to the DeSantis contrast, right? It's a typical political campaign response, right? But it's well executed. It's like, here are my opponent's weaknesses.

I'm going to make fun of them a little bit. I'm going to try to raise money off of this. Nobody thinks it's really Joe Biden behind the, you know, pressing click on the tweet, right? It's like, here's our campaign's message to this, and we're going to use Joe Biden's platforms to do that. That's like the best DeSantis could do, right? You would want a DeSantis to best DeSantis could do, right? You would want

DeSantis to have that type of rollout, right? Like not, you know, he's never going to be Donald Trump. He's not going to do a weird, I'm coming down the escalator and saying strange things, right? It's like, okay, this is a competent person that can execute an announcement well, deliver a contrast against his opponent, deliver a clear message. And he totally failed to do that. And Biden did it, you know, just perfectly adequately yesterday. And I think that that's, you know, how they should continue to position him, you know, for the next year and a half. Yeah, I hadn't thought about the advantage of Biden being able to sort of use all the Republican primary candidates attacks on each other, like to benefit himself in this,

partly because like last time this happened in 2016, Hillary really couldn't do that because she was embroiled in the Bernie Sanders fight. So you didn't have like one Democratic incumbent or Democratic candidate who was able to just sort of like take advantage of all the fighting on the Republican side. And now Biden can do that. And it was good to see him taking that opportunity. You look a lot like a guy who was on the 2012 campaign with me. When we did. I mean, well, that was before 2016.

Again, this is BC. This is when politics was normal. I was sure it was this Jon Favreau who was the one on the campaign, not the other one. Talking about Romnesia? Anyway. anyway we're really rude to me it's just in retrospect we're cutting it here we're cutting this part of the podcast we all know we are only politician with dignity left on the republican side you guys had to to smear. We all know that the Big Bird attack and the binders full of women,

that's what swung that election at the end of the day. Those were the attacks. Tim, thank you for joining. This was fun as always. And when we come back, Dan and I will finally get to the fun stuff. Debt ceiling negotiations. All right.

We all had a few laughs at Rob DeSantis' expense, but now it's time to turn those smiles upside down and talk about the debt ceiling. With just seven days to go until Treasury thinks the U.S. will default on its debt, Democrats are sounding anxious and Republicans are sounding cocky, so cocky that they're openly admitting to holding the economy hostage. Here's Kevin McCarthy and then Matt Gaetz. You've been asking for the White House to make 100 concessions. Are those concessions that you're going to make? And what are those concessions?

We're going to raise the deficit. That's your concession. How would you characterize the mood among your conservative colleagues right now? I think my conservative colleagues, for the most part, support limit, save, grow, and they don't feel like

we should negotiate with our hostage. So there you go. Kevin McCarthy says the concession that Republicans are giving in their negotiations is raising the debt ceiling, which is also known as preventing a catastrophic default. That's their concession. And Matt Gaetz is saying we don't want to negotiate with the hostage. Those comments certainly didn't seem like accidental gaffes. Why do you think Republicans are so confident right now

and just openly bragging about this shit? Can I just yell about this for one second? Yes, you can. That's why you're here on this podcast, fucking American. Kevin McCarthy, put aside Matt Gaetz. He's a fucking clown. I'm gonna cut.

Kevin McCarthy, the Speaker of the House, admits in front of the entire Capitol Hill press corps that he is engaging in extortion by threatening the default of the United States and a potential global financial collapse. And almost no one covers it. We just go, well, let's get back to our discussion of the very serious negotiations. It's not a negotiation. When a bank robber puts a gun in the face of a

bank teller and asks for them to empty the safe, that is not a negotiation about how much money they give. It is armed robbery and it's fucking insane. And I do think the press has done an absolutely miserable fucking job covering this. They have normalized a deeply dangerous behavior because the question for Kevin McCarthy is not what is your concession or what deal are you going to get? It's what happens if there is no deal on the X date? Are you going to let the country default or are you going to pass a short-term extension? That's all. Only he can do that. Joe Biden can't do that. Only Kevin McCarthy can decide whether we default or not. And the press is putting all of the pressure and responsibility on Joe Biden. And that is a huge failure on behalf of the vast majority of the pressure and responsibility on Joe Biden. And that is a huge failure on behalf of the vast

majority of the reporters covering this. Okay, rant over, sorry. But do you, yeah, no, I, of course, of course. I wonder though, if Biden getting into negotiations is what has allowed them, the press, to cover it as your typical negotiation with just this, you know, threat of default looming. That is definitely true, but that is a poor fucking excuse on the press's behalf. Your job is to report what's happening. You can say Joe Biden is engaging in negotiations, but at the end of the day, the dynamic drive of the negotiations is the Republicans threatening default. This is not the negotiations over the shape of the budget. It's not a budget negotiation. It is a budget negotiation if everyone has truly agreed they're

not going to let the country default. But Kevin McCarthy's statement is implying that they are going to let the country default if they don't get the deal they want. And that should change it. Did the Bidens, that first meeting between Biden and McCarthy and the negotiators and all of that, give them permission to do that? Yes, but that does not excuse your jobs to portray what is happening accurately, not portray what you wish was happening. I mean, it seems like they're confident and cocky because they're willing to shoot the hostage and that they are betting that they won't get blamed for it. And the reason they're betting they won't get blamed for it is because most Americans aren't paying attention to this. And if they do pay attention, it's probably because we defaulted. And then the Americans who aren't paying close attention will just know that Joe Biden's president when they think that, yeah, it's reasonable to ask for spending cuts, right? They think that's a reasonable thing

because people are predisposed to believe that the government spends too much money. And then, of course, when you ask them whether they favor cutting specific programs, then they take the Democrat side and say, no, I don't want to cut that program, that program or that program. We've talked about this before, but it certainly seems like that's why Republicans have the upper hand or appear to have the upper hand in these negotiations because they're willing to shoot the hostage and Joe Biden isn't. Yeah, absolutely. And the question of who the public blames in the immediate aftermath of a default is a largely irrelevant question. It does not matter. It certainly doesn't matter to the millions of people who lose their jobs and the people who can't afford things because interest rates skyrocket because of it,

or the people whose 401ks and retirement plans are nuked. It doesn't matter to them. But even if you just want to focus on the politics of it, even let's say we default Joe Biden and every Democrat uses every available outlet to hammer the Republicans, you convince them that it's the Republicans' fault. When people actually vote again in November of 2024, who do you think they're going to blame? The largely anonymous groups of fucking weirdos who made this happen in the summer of 2023 are the guys sitting in the White House while unemployment has doubled and we're in a recession and the stock market's at half of what it is, whatever. They're going to blame Joe Biden and Republicans know that. And Donald Trump's out there saying, elect me and I'll fix it all

because the economy was great when I was president until COVID happened. And Ron DeSantis is saying how he's going to use Dogecoin to bring the economy back. But no one heard it because it was only five seconds and then that was it. And they're crackled. Yeah. So there's obviously Democrats are voicing frustration on the record, off the record, on background about how the White House is handling these negotiations. They think they're losing the message war. They're worried they'll have to vote for a shitty deal. Let's start with just the message. Republicans have been talking to a lot to reporters about the negotiations. They've been available to any reporter who asked them a question about these negotiations. The White House has not said them a question about these negotiations. The White House

has not said much at all about the negotiations. Why do you think that is? And should the White House and Biden be out there more? I mean, at this point, we're a couple of days away. Yeah, I think the ship has sailed on that. And the White House clearly made a decision that the most important thing here was to avoid default on the best possible terms. And understanding those possible terms were not going best possible terms. And understand those possible terms were not going to be good. And so they were going to take any amount of shit in the short and the medium term to avoid the fate I just talked about for the country and for their politics. And this is going to be rough for them. If we default, it's obviously a disaster for everyone

involved. And if they get a deal, it's going to be a deal that most Democrats are not happy about. Some of them are going to be forced to vote for it who don't want to vote for it. It is going to the Republican and Biden's going to be limited in what he can say about it, because if he says it's a victory for himself, that he's going to need to deliver more Democratic votes because more Republicans will peel off. It is this is a shitty situation. They made a decision. And I can't say whether that's the right decision or the wrong decision. We won't know until we until we see a deal that the best way to get the best possible deal was to stay quiet and try to avoid poisoning the well. Right. Because, again, Biden doesn't want the hostage to get shot, and he's worried that if he goes out there and says something that pisses off Republicans, they'll shoot the hostage.

they'll shoot the hostage. I mean, we dealt with this in the Obama White House many times, which is, this is the price you pay for being the responsible leader who doesn't want to see people hurt and the economy tanked. And it is not necessarily a fair fight when you're up against hostage takers who don't give a shit. Yeah. And there's an asymmetry here because Republicans aren't worried about poisoning the negotiations because they do not care about the outcome on people. And Biden does. He is responsible. So he has to take on political baggage to try to avoid an absolutely disastrous fate, not just for the United States, but for the entire world. Did you see, I think Punchbowl had this this morning, that there's an emerging potential deal where debt ceiling gets lifted through 2024. And basically they all pledged to figure out all the spending bills and the budget by the end of the year.

And if they don't pass all the spending bills and pass a budget, then there'll be like an automatic budget caps, which means like a cut, a big spending cut and like a CR, continuing resolution that would just basically fund the government for another year with just one big cut on a whole bunch of programs. So as I understood that reporting, it was the following, is that they're going to agree on budget caps as part of this negotiation. And those caps at that exact top line number will go in place one of two ways. Either the appropriations process works and then this Congress, with the influence of the White House, gets to decide how the money under that cap is spent. Do you put a little more education,

a little more into this, under each of the however many appropriation bills there are, 13 or 14 or something like that. And if that fails, then the CR will go into place automatically and they won't have to vote on it. I'm not sure how that fits with House incentive procedure, but that's what would happen anyway. When you don't have appropriations bills, you have two choices, shut the government down or pass a CR. So this is basically, I think, just taking one step out of it. And what matters here is what those caps are, not the fact. There are going to be caps under all scenarios. Any sort of budget agreement would have caps. And so I think the Republicans want to keep putting out information that suggests a deal is eminent because what they want is for the markets to

not react yet. Because if the markets start reacting, then pressure will be put on them by their donors, by the Chamber of Commerce and others to move more quickly. And it erodes some of their leverage. The White House would also like that because what really hurts the economy is not just default. It's all the turbulence in the run-up to potential default. And even when you avert default, you still pay a price. In 2011, we set the economy back a while because we came so close to default.

And so it's also in the White House interest to make it seem like a deal is right around the corner because it keeps the economy moving apace as opposed to getting hit. And one of the ratings agencies just put US credit rating on watch, on negative watch, meaning we could downgrade you, careful. So I think that, and the fact that even if a deal is reached today, Thursday, probably one is going to be reached in the middle of this podcast. Cause that's always what happens. Not, not while we're recording. Cause that would be too easy. It will be right. 10 minutes after. Yeah. But even if they reach a deal today, it probably couldn't become law at the earliest until June 3rd or 4th. And you know,

they think the X date is June 1, but like, whatever, we could have a couple of days here and there. So it does feel like there is a lot of external pressure on both sides to just get something done like today or tomorrow. And I do wonder if in that scenario where you're agreeing on caps. The actual details of what gets cut do get punted. Yeah, exactly. Then I feel like both Republicans and Democrats and the White House at that point are like, we're going to figure it out later.

Let's just, you know, and the bet there is that it's not going to have a huge political impact either way. But you will know that which areas, right, which agencies are going to take a hit because you'll know the delta between 2023 and 2024 or 2022, 23 plus 23, 24 because of how the fiscal year lays out. The Republicans want to get this done by Friday because they have a 72-hour rule as part of their House procedures. And they would really like that 72 hours to be Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Memorial Day weekend or Saturday, Sunday, Monday, as opposed to everyone running around the Capitol ginning each other up about it.

And if they have a deal, two things will happen. One, there are ways to figure out how to extend things for 24 hours or whatever to get there. That happened a little bit in 2011. And Jake Sherman responded to a somewhat trolly tweet of mine with great earnestness to say that his understanding from the Republican House is that if a deal is being drafted or they're very, very close, the Republican House would agree to a short-term extension just to get to pass the X date and not have any speed bumps.

Well, everyone's working really hard on Capitol Hill. They're really focused on getting a deal. Before we go, there is just one other thing that the House Republicans have been focused on. On Tuesday, Speaker Kevin McCarthy's partially used chapstick was auctioned off as part of a Republican fundraising event. The winning bid was from none other than Marjorie Taylor Greene, who paid $100,000 from her campaign account to

get a taste of Kevin's cherry Chapstick. So she's donating $100,000 to the NRCC that elects House Republicans. I don't know where the chapstick came in uh she got interviewed about this here's a clip can i ask you about the chapstick what about it i guess is it worth 100k i donated to have kevin mccarky come to do to come to my district to see my constituents so dan can you figure out why the fuck any of this happened like i get the i get the donating from your campaign account to the nrcc i get that right that's they ask people politicians who've raised a lot of money for themselves that might not need it all please donate it to other republican candidates whatever where's the chapstick come in why the chapstick

who used chapstick look i think republic Republicans looked at the landscape and thought voters thought they weren't weird and disgusting enough. And so they decided to lean into it. I mean, it just shows- Days from default. Days from default. We're auctioning off chapstick? It shows just how weird it is that Marjorie Taylor Greene, of all people, was defensive

about it. To be like, I didn't pay for chapstick. I paid to bring Kevin McCarthy to my district to meet with my constituents. Because I'm a serious person who didn't just buy ChapStick that may be one degree removed from Trump's ass. Like, it's like. And now he's going to show up in her district with cracked lips. It's just. It's really weird.

These people are really weird, Dan. Yeah, it's a weird thing. are really weird dan yeah it's it's a weird thing remember the last time we had a debt ceiling destructive dangerous and weird remember uh two debt ceiling crises ago uh the way kevin mccarthy rallied the troops was to show them the scene in the town where uh ben affleck gets jeremy renner the good old days yeah real real joe mizzoula move there do you understand that reference all right dan um i think that's all i think that's all we are we are out we've done it all today we did it thank you to tim miller for joining us everyone have a great weekend there will be no pod on tuesday because monday is Memorial Day but we will be dropping

in the PSA feed a best of episode of our subscription only show Terminally Online which is the most fun show we record here at Crooked Media where we all bring items that show how terminally online

we all are. I am the host of Offline as well but I wear two hats for this show. And if you want to get the show every week, which you should, go subscribe at crooked.com slash friends. Come join our Friend of the Pod community. So everyone check that out.

And then Dan and I will be back next Thursday. Have a good weekend. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producers are Andy Gardner-Bernstein and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

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Find us at youtube.com slash at Pod Save America. This week's episode of On the Media from WNYC Studios tells the story of how On the Media reporter Micah Loewinger's expose of the role of the Oath Keepers on January 6th, 2021 led to a subpoena to testify in the federal trial of the group's leader, Stuart Rhodes. And they hear from someone who had a front row seat for the creation of the Oath Keepers, Rhodes' estranged wife. Listen to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.